Saving Me
by x.Radish.x
Summary: Amidst the destruction, Katara must decide what means most to her; the life of a love or the death of an enemy.


Disclaimer: none of the characters in this fan fiction belong to me - not even the extras (unnamed soldiers and Benders). They are property of Mike and Brian, Avatar God-s.

"Firebenders. North." Aang's voice is breathless and his grey eyes bugle in their sockets. He plucks his glider from Appa's back. "Coming this way."

Katara feels her blood turn to ice in her veins. "How many?"

He shrugs, grimacing apologetically. "I'm not sure; I didn't think to count. Thirty, I'd say."

Toph frowns confusedly. "With Azula? Or is it a patrol?"

"Azula."

Sokka moans in both irritation and longing. "Let's tear her to shreds!" He spares a glance Zuko's way and pats his armoured knee. "Sorry, buddy."

Zuko smiles wryly. "No problem. I second that notion." His eyes wander to Katara's and she meets his gaze, concerned. "What do you think? Fight or flee?"

Her mouth sets in a stubborn line that the boys are all too familiar with. "Fight."

Sokka grins, weilding his club. In his excitement, his movement has become clumsy and he swings the weapon gracelessly through the air in aggressive chopping motions. "Let's kill us some Firebenders!"

Zuko stands slowly and lets twin flares of flame engulf his forearms and clenched fists. "Let's."

Katara moves beside him, her wrists twitching in minute circling motions, swirling a streak of water in the air before her. "Let me take her."

"Katara…" Zuko begins to protest, but her mouth hardens and he sees a spark ignite in her cerulean eyes. "I don't think…"

"She's mine," Katara insists, falling into a defensive position beside him. Her wild curls are pulled back from her face in a tight braid and her muscles bunch under her cocoa skin. Her breath comes in excited gasps. Zuko stares quietly at her and feels his resolve fall away.

"If you want her that badly."

Her lips curl back into a savage snarl and she growls, "I do."

Lowering his voice so that the others may not here him, he tells her in a tone laced with affection, "Be careful. Promise me that."

She turns her head so that she may look into his narrow amber eyes and her face softens into a smile as she replies, "I promise."

Toph stands close to Aang, her stocky legs splayed and her muscular arms raised, thumbs crossed over her palms, index and middle fingers raised in readiness. Her milky eyes flash. "Ten metres," she murmurs and the group simultaneously draws nervous breath and holds it. When sunlight glints on armour, Sokka stabs a clenched fist into the sky and roars, "Attack!"

Four lines of soldiers appear from beneath their camouflage of foliage, perhaps ten of them masked with skull plates to signify them as Firebenders. Behind them, four foot soldiers shoulder a great throne. Atop it lounges Azula, her sleek raven hair pulled back from her sharp face; a cruel smile twists beneath her fiery eyes. At the sight of her, Katara snarls, falling into a defensive crouch.

"Now!" she commands and a rift opens at the feet of the first line and a handful of soldiers scream as they are eaten up by the earth that was once solid beneath their spiked heels. Toph chuckles and draws the rift closed with a mighty cloud of loose soil.

The remaining soldiers close ranks and march steadily onward, Firebenders advancing with arms raised and ready, fists blazing. With a roar, Zuko sets toward them, fire dancing about his taught limbs. "Now, Katara!" he instructs. "We've got this!"

Aang calls something incoherent that resembles a cry of agreement, sweeping the second line off their feet with a gush of air before Toph pulls a layer of earth over the top of them. Katara sees their limbs, coated thickly in dirt and blood, scrabbling at the earth encasing them, beginning to slow as the men attached to them are asphyxiated. Sokka leaps on top of the mound, crushing a buried soldier's wrists as he lands momentarily on top of them, then shoots off in the direction of more Firebenders that stand between Katara and Azula.

Following suit, Katara shoots a great stream of water toward an advancing cluster of foot soldiers armed with heavy clubs peppered with malicious-looking spikes. She freezes them in mid-step and as she races by them, she sees their dead flesh is already turning black with frostbite. Undeterred, she feels for the jugular in an oncoming Firebender's neck and pushes with her mind and feels the pulse come to a halt; the Bender scrabbles in panic at his neck and drops like a stone, clawing at his skin.

Few soldiers stand between her and the princess, who has dropped to the ground and stands back, watching the entire scene with some kind of sick amusement. Katara wipes them out with a simple push, feeling for their hearts and bursting the surrounding vessels. One soldier stares bemusedly up at her as she passes, blood running from his eyes and mouth as he gasps for his dying breaths.

"Azula!" she shrieks, speeding up so she comes at the princess at a dead sprint, twisting water in her hands. When she lashes out with it, Azula skips neatly to the side and then speeds up herself so the two of them come to meet in the centre of the battlefield with the almost silent crash of skin and bone grinding against one another. Azula's heavy steel armguards scrape along Katara's own leather ones and blue flame dances of her fingertips.

"Water whore," she sneers. "So nice to see you again."

"I'm not sure that I can say the same," Katara spits, her eyes narrowing. She feels adrenalin racing through her limbs, making the hairs on her arms stand erect. Part of her longs to burst Azula's heart or freeze the fluids flowing through her brain; but another, larger part of her refuses to do so. Only a fair fight, Bending with elements only, would satiate this burning hate that has settled itself it the pit of Katara's gut. She stares into Azula's cold, golden eyes and feel her mouth twist into a contemptuous smile.

"I could make you cry blood," she hisses. "I could make you sick up your own guts."

Azula takes no obvious notice to this threat; instead a sly smile curves her thin lips. "But you don't want to do it that way, do you?" the princess muses, pleased by this in a dark way. "I bet you've had this entire scene planned out in your head, you little savage."

"In my head, you screamed," Katara informs her icily and leaps back as she feels the metal of Azula's armguards heating up rapidly; only moments later the Firebender's entire arm is ablaze with aggressive, sapphire flame.

"Let's do this, then," the princess murmurs confidently and her arm jerks forward, a jet of fire moving with her; Katara ducks swiftly and shoots forward a volley of icicles toward her opponent in reply to the former's attack. Azula leaps and whirls in the air, the ice missing her by mere millimetres and hurls a ball of flame Katara's way; a second flaming sphere is flung from her foot. Katara coats herself in water and feels the fire sizzle against her liquid armour. She sees Azula smirk as the water drains off her skin.

"I knew you'd take the defensive position," she remarks smugly and Katara bristles. "It's going to take more than a little splash of water to finish me, water whore."

"We'll see," Katara replies pertly, and brings her arm up abruptly, pulling water from the earth and twisting it into a concreted cylinder of dirty ice; with a fierce pushing motion she propels the ice at Azula and grins maliciously when she hears its solid bulk crash against the princess's armour. Azula is flung back hard and collides with a gnarled tree trunk, a grunt of pain escaping from between her lips. When she attempts to rise, Katara summons water from beneath the ground and throws it in a tidal wave at the Firebender, who is tossed limply backward like a rag doll. The crack of her skull against wood rings out clearly over the sounds of the battle raging around the two women and Azula slides wearily to the ground, blood dripping from her hairline.

"Thought it would take more than that," Katara remarks softly to herself and races to stand over the princess, eyes glinting. She takes water from inside of the tree's leaves and twists it into a narrow stake and holds it poised above Azula's heart. The princess's hair has come loose and falls over her face in midnight tentacles; her eyes are glazed and one pupil slides inward toward her bloodied nose so she is slightly cockeyed. She swallows rapidly, thoroughly dazed.

"Bitch," she spits when the sun-coloured eye that still focuses falls on Katara. "Are you going to kill me now?"

"I think so," Katara replies, her voice soft. Azula grins and her teeth are bloody; Katara thinks that she must have bitten her tongue when she knocked her head. All around them the sounds of battle resound; the crash of the earth opening and closing, the cyclonic whistle of gale-force winds, the wails of the dying. Somehow Katara has become oblivious to all of this; she does not even feel her usually unnecessary concern for her friends' safety. When an animalistic howl of pain is cut off by the sound of metal slicing flesh, she does not even flinch. All of her senses are attuned to the gulping, semi-conscious form crumpled on the ground before her and the burning rage that fuels this urge to kill.

"Do it," Azula dares her, grinning her bloody grin. "Go on and kill me."

Staring fixedly, as though possessed, Katara raises the stake, Bending it in midair for she fears that if she is to drive it between Azula's ribcage with her bare hands she will not hit hard enough.

"In my head you screamed," she murmurs, fixated. Her hands make circling movements and the stake begins to rotate in drilling motions, moving so fast it becomes almost a blur. Azula cackles and then-

"Katara!"

The voice is Zuko's and it breaks through Katara's hypnotised state of pseudo-comatose; she whips around in time to see him being thrown backward by a Firebender who has found a dead soldier's mace and decided to wield it instead of flame.

"Zuko!" she screams. "No!"

His belly is bloodied and torn and he scrambles backward to avoid a second blow. He yells for her to help.

"Zuko, I'm coming!" she wails. As she takes a step toward him, she feels a hand wind itself around her ankle. She gasps and turns to see Azula struggling to pull herself into a sitting position. She fails and falls onto her back and lies grinning up at Katara.

"Forgetting something?" she asks. Her voice is low and laced with venom. "Going to kill me?"

"Zuko…" Katara whispers, almost as though offering an excuse. Azula laughs wildly.

"Kill us both or save us both?" she asks. "Kill us or save us?"

Katara hesitates and it feels to her like she pauses for hours; in reality it's less than a second. Azula's hysteria trails off to giggles; her face twists into a grimace.

"Do it!" she shrieks, clawing at Katara's ankle. "DO IT!"

The stake hovers in midair and Katara looks frantically between Zuko and his sister. Kill them or save them?

Kill.

The stake begins to spin faster as she becomes more agitated and Katara squeezes her eyes shut, her fingers going to her temples.

"Katara!"

"Zuko!"

She pivots on her heels, swinging her arms out to guide her weapon forward at unbelievable speed; instead of impaling Azula, the stake punctures through Zuko's attacker's armour, through his heart and erupts from his breastplate. The Firebender cries out and pitches forward onto Zuko, who scrambles away, clutching his belly to hold his guts in. As Katara races to his side, the call for retreat is bellowed by one of the few surviving Fire Nation soldiers; perhaps ten of the original number swarm toward their leader, who lolls in the dirt, eyes rolling crazily, her mouth stretched into a wide, triumphant grin. Azula is swept onto the shoulders of one of the soldiers and she hangs limply there, blood and saliva dripping onto the soldier's armour as she bellows something that Katara does not register - at least, not yet. For the time being the Waterbender falls to her lover's side, her hands encased in glowing water; she presses her fingers into his wounds, weeping, willing for the flesh to bind and for the blood to stop flowing. Zuko clutches her tunic with one bloody hand, the cords on his neck standing out as he thrashes his head from side to side.

"I'm sorry," Katara sobs, "It'll stop hurting in a moment. Please…Oh, God, I nearly left you…I nearly killed her…"

Slowly, the skin begins to creep over Zuko's stomach and all of a sudden his face smoothes over and his eyes flutter shut in ecstasy. His breathing slows and his grip on her clothing loosens; Katara lets her hands fall from his healed wounds and drops her head so she may kiss him. He stares up at her, his eyes soft, his mouth smiling.

"You saved me," he whispers. She touches his nose with a single fingertip and returns his smile, though her eyes are hesitant.

"I nearly didn't…and even so, I let her get away," she reminds him, and as her face crumples into shame; she can't bring herself to meet his eyes for any longer. Suddenly, a small, strong hand grips her shoulder and she raises her head to meet Toph's milky eyes.

"You did the right thing, Sugar Queen. If you hadn't saved Sparky's arse, who'd be my ostrich horse and teach Aang Firebending?" she asks softly. When she sees a tiny smile bloom on Katara's lips, she slaps her on the back. "There you go."

"You did the right thing," Aang assures her, coming to sit beside her and reaching to touch her cheek.

As she looks down at Zuko's ruined face and sees that tenderness in his eyes that he reserves only for her and feels one of his big hands come to rest on her face, she is sure that her monk-friend is telling the truth.

-

Later that night, after Katara has crept into Zuko's tent so that she may curl up on his pallet beside him, she breathes the scent of his ashen skin and feels his strong arms around her. He has long since fallen asleep; his breathing is slow and even and a tiny smile dances on his lips so she knows he is dreaming of pleasant things.

In her head, Azula's face is spattered with gore as it looms from the gloom, grinning that crazed grin and screaming those last, incoherent words.

"Next time, wench!"

Katara presses closer to his warmth and he automatically wraps his arms tighter around her without waking. In the darkness she listens to him breathe and waits for sleep to come.


End file.
